Jack Bauer’s Day is Done – Fox Cancels 24

It’s official: Jack Bauer’s current day, which has him chasing all over New York trying to stop — what else? — Middle Eastern terrorist types from blowing up the city with a dirty bomb will officially be his last hectic day on “24”. At least, on TV. The show’s current season, it’s eighth, will officially be the last one, with the last episode airing sometime in May. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean the end for Jack Bauer, because recent talks of taking the character to the big screen (and Europe) have begun to take shape.

So what happened? A combination of rising production costs and declining ratings no doubt had a major impact, but as fans of the show probably noticed all year, “24” just isn’t “24” anymore. Not in its eighth year, anyway. This is all a little bittersweet for me. I was very enthusiastic about the current season coming in, but quickly lost interest (the utterly retarded and impossibly out-of-this-world illogical Dana Walsh storyline certainly didn’t help), only to return a week ago by finally watching all those “24” episodes I had DVR’ed.

As to the “24” movie, producer Howard Gordon tells THR that the script is currently being worked on by Billy Ray, with the action taking Jack Bauer to Europe as rumored. Curiously, Gordon also says that the movie won’t employ the real-time gimmick of the TV show.

Jack is really the center of it, catching up with him emotionally and locationally where he is. The opportunity is not to use the real-time aspect and also to do it on a scale the TV show never allowed.

So when can you expect a “24” movie? The earliest, says Gordon, is early next year, depending on how happy everyone is with Ray’s script.

Meanwhile, on “24”, it was just revealed that Dana Walsh was — gasp! — secretly a cyborg from outer space who is prepping mankind for subjugation by a bunch of sentient machines called Cylons, and only Jack Bauer can stop her! What? That’s not nearly as far-fetched as all the crap the character’s already done on the show.